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selenakThe art of writing in an interesting fashion about your own life is still severely underestimated. Having had an interesting life doesn't do the trick, as I found out many years ago when I slogged through Marlene Dietrich's memoirs, which were deadly dull, despite the facts of her life being certainly of the fascinating kind. But not many people who excell in other arts are also good writers, and then there's the way many modern autobiographies are written, with a ghostwriter doing the honours, which often results in generic voices. So every time I come across a memoir that isn't just interesting in terms of reported content but actually has style, I'm over the moon. Which certainly is the case with Luck and Circumstance. In fact, it's such a joy to read in terms of just savouring the fine descriptions - its author is a director, and it shows in the best way - that I immediately read it again, and not simply because it manages to combine several of my eras of interest: Hollywod and New York in the 40s, Swinging London in the 60s, convoluted family relationships.
In a way, I think it helps that our author never quite made it to star status himself; it makes him an excellent observer of everyone else, inside and outside the various circles at the same time. He was the son of actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, and the various candidates for the position of his father - her first husband who gave Michael his name, Orson Welles whom his mother had an affair with and who for a long time is Michael's fantasy father, and her second husband who did the actual raising but never quite connected - make for a surplus of father figures regarded with varying emotional investment, and that's not touching on Geraldine's lovers without possible fatherhood like Robert Capa or Henry Miller, and her bitter struggle to make it in Hollywood and/or the New York and Dublin stage. Geraldine is the breadwinner in the family and the men have nicknames like "Boy", which makes for a different gender coding from the start. If anyone is the main character of this volume, approached from different angles in a Citizen Kane like fashion, she is, mercurial, determined, changing and recreating her stories all the time.
In the 60s, Michael became a director on the British tv show Ready Steady Go which led to a lot of promos (= future music vids) for the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, culminating in that most depressing of rock documentaries, Let It Be. But before we reach the infamous breakup in 1969, our hero has, in 1966, such problems as to whether dine with Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich or to meet the Beatles for lunch so he'll get hired to shoot the promo for Paperback Writer. May I volunteer for that kind of problem? (Not really. I like my family situation better. Also, Orson & Marlene on the one hand versus John, Paul, George and Ringo on the other are a cruel, cruel choice.) Whereas I'm really glad not to have one of his later dilemmas, when he prepared, cast, and shot a great deal of the tv version of Brideshead Revisited only to be foiled by an unholy combination of the big union strike and his mother getting dementia, with the result of being replaced as a director of that future tv classic.
Now for the quotable goodies to show you what I mean re: MLHs writing style.
Starting with a reflection on the inevitable fictionalisation of memory:
One of the things I find in writing about people who are dead is that, after a short or long time, no matter how close the relationship was, they become like characters in fiction; in that, since they are no longer able to explain motives or clarify obfuscations or tell the truth, however simple or complicated, the author must do it for them and use imagination to decipher the information and decode the memories. But with this comes a daunting responsibility - to not come to easy and tidy conclusions about someone's life and to not avoid new evidence which runs counter to what seemed clear earlier. And to remember that people can change; what someone was at twenty-five or thirty might bear no resemblance to the person at fifty or sixty, they having weathered fate and circumstance, exalted by the good, buffeted by the bad; and the part that luck plays, how it can be cruel or grand, or just have gone somewhere else.
Wise words, and would that every memoirist was aware of this. Child!Michael meets Orson Welles, who is directing Geraldine in King Lear, for the first time:
He was glorious at that time, forty years old, tall, broad, dressed in black, starting to be heavy but not nearly with the weight which must have partly killed him. A big head with glossy black hair, alert amused brown eyes under the broad forehead, with his enveloping, welcoming seductive voice. But there was something else to him, a kind of emanation of energy and intelligence, curiosity, and originality.
(Orson spends this memoir being Orsonish, i.e. sometimes charming and sometimes infuriating. Never quite reliable. More Welles quotes to come.)
And here we have our author characterising the Mick Jagger/Keith Richards relationship, of which he saw quite a lot through two decades:
(I) realized it was really a struggle between Keith and Mick, and saw the complexity that existed in a relationship that had started in grade school. On this occasion, it was through a rabid dog had gone on the attack against a wily agile cat who, I was sure, would always find a safe perch to land on.
From now on I shall always think of Mick Jagger as a cat. It totally fits. Back in time, to young Michael meeting William Randolph Hearst via Marion Davies:
It wasn't that I was uneasy as I lifted my heavy silver spoon, but a room this large was unfamiliar to me, that and it being so cool inside and the sun so hot outside and large Mr. Hearst at the head of the table, and the darkness behind him except for the shaded window made me feel that everything was strangely muted and, somehow, grey.
Hearst becomes less grey when mentioning he owns young Michael's favourite comic book character, though. And Marion saves his action figure from the pool, so. From real Hearst to fictional Kane popping up, of all the times, when Michael does meet the Beatles:
George asked, "Have you ever seen Citizen Kane?"
"I have, yes."
"Rosebud," he said, as if exchanging a password.
"Rosebud, yes."
"Brian said to look at it. I saw it last night. We should do a video like that."
"That would be great," I said, eager for an ally, although not exactly sure how a "Rosebud" video would go.
Me neither, Michael, me neither. The whole first encounter description is a black comedy with Hard Day's Night overtones, though he's unironic and sincere when trying to define what made the Beatles THE band, Rolling Stones notwithstanding, what their specific appeal was:
As the Gods of Mythology had their particular domain, so The Beatles were the Gods of Joy. Joy in music, joy in singing, in laughter and jokes, joy in fame, in having such a great connection with each other and with us, joy in being alive.
So it would have been unimaginable then, and is ghastly now, to consider that of those who came from Liverpool, principally Brian Epstein, Peter Brown, Mal Evans, Neil Aspinall, John, Paul, George, and Ringo, that by the end of 1980 three would be dead and another would not reach the age of sixty.
By the end of '68, of course, the gods of joy were severely lacking in joy, and their connections to each other were breaking down. Cue ominous music in the background (more Bernard Hermann than Beatles) as Paul has a brainwave and calls Michael to a meeting with the rest of the gang, suggesting a documentary film on them making their next album, complete with concluding concert.
Paul was the one who kept pushing for us to make a plan. His character is resolute, and I think in his heart Paul felt that if he couldn't get them to agree as a group to do something as a group that they might fall apart, and, because of his nature, that was the last thing he wanted.
The meeting ends with a scene no RPFler would dare to make up. And who needs to if you've got John Lennon doing all your work for you?
As the meeting was drawing to a weary close, John, not this day with Yoko, said he wanted to play us a tape he and Yoko had made. He got up and put a cassette into the tape machine and stood beside it, looking at us as we listened. The soft murmuring voices did not at first signal their purpose. It was a man and a woman but hard to hear, the microphone having been at a distance. I wondered if the lack of clarity was the point. Were we even meant to understand what was going on, was it a kind of artwork where we would not be able to put the voices into a context, and was context important? I felt perhaps this was something John and Yoko were examining. But then, after a few minutes, the context became clear. John and Yoko were making love, with endearments, giggles, heavy breathing, both real and satirical, and the occasional more direct sounds of pleasure reaching for a climax, all recorded by the faraway microphone. But there was something innocent about it, too, as they were engaged in a sweet serious game.
John clicked the off button and turned again to look toward the table, his eyebrows quizzical above his round glasses, seemingly genuinely curious about what reaction his little tape would elicit. However often they'd shared small rooms in Hamburg, whatever they knew of each other's love and sex lives, this tape seemed to have stopped the other three cold. Perhaps it touched a nerve of residual Northern reticence.
After a palpable silence, Paul said, 'Well, that's an interesting one."
The others muttered something and the meeting was over.
It occurred to me as I was walking down the stairs that what we'd heard could have been an expression of 1960s freedom and openness but was it more likely that it was as if a gauntlet had been thrown down? "You need to understand that this is where she and I are now. I don't want to hold your hand anymore."
I, err, have my doubts whether it was all about expressing 1960s freedom and openness as well. Anyway, Michael's description of the Let it Be disaster basically is according to your avarage biography though he downplays his own taped hostility to Yoko; among the 80 or so hours of material from those sessions, there is one occasion where he suggests dosing her with a sleeping draught so someone could have a conversation with John without her and at one point even makes a racist joke, calling her "the yellow peril", wheras in his memoirs he gets along perfectly well with her, admires "the refinement of her beauty, her intelligence and questing artistic imagination, and her commitment to the union she and John were creating, and the magnetic field she'd erected around them, and later defends her against the accusation of having caused the break-up when Orson, no less eager than the rest of the world to get the inside scoop, wants to know what tore the Beatles apart. He has a trump card to finish his Beatles-related chapter with, of course, to wit, the rooftop concert.
On Thursday, January 30, 1969, The Beatles, Yoko, and I gathered about noon in a small room off the wooden staircase leading to the roof and, to my dismay, I realized the enterprise was not secure. George didn't want to do it, didn't see the point - what did it have to do with anything?
Ringo said, "And it's cold up there."
"Come on, lads," Paul said. "It'll be fun," enthusiasm covering the hard muscle of his determination. "Let's do something."
But no one moved. The six of us stood there, stasis about to set in, momentum about to be fatally lost, ennui about to settle its cloud on our beings. But one voice had not been heard from. Eyes under lids looked toward that person. Time froze.
"Fuck it," John said. "Let's do it."
And so The Beatles climbed the narrow staircase to the roof and into history. The concert on the roof was the last time The Beatles ever played together to any kind of audience. It was their final performance, their good-bye, although none of us knew it. And the wonderful thing was that they were happy, dispute and rancor forgotten. In the forty minutes we were up there, on that cold winter's day, they rocked and rolled and connected as they had in years gone by, friends again. It was beautiful to see.
When it was over, John stepped to the mike and said: "I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition."
The other great triumph/disaster in Michael Lindsay-Hogg's repertoire of stories is his involvement with Brideshead Revisited. Here, my favourite story deals with how he and the producer had to sell Jeremy Irons, who was originally cast as Sebastian, on the fact they wanted him to play Charles instead. This was especially difficult because Jeremy Irons, no fool, knew Sebastian was the better role. (If you're unfamiliar with Brideshead Revisited, Sebastian is excentric, flamboyant, witty, gay and doomed. Charles is the narrator and, err, a bit dull.)
"Well, how are things going, the casting?" Jeremy asked, eager to catch up.
"The casting. That's a good question," I said, having been offered the opening. "Look, um, Derek and I have been thinking."
"That's always a good thing," said Jeremy, teasing.
"Charles," Derek said, jumping right in.
"Charles? How do you mean?"
"For you."
"Oh."
Jeremy was silent for a moment and then said, "I'm very happy with Sebastian. I've been thinking about him a lot."
I wondered if he'd bought the new coat to waer as a part of his costume.
Jeremy took a sip of tea.
Jeremy was, and is, a smart actor and realized that Sebastian, with his glamour and his sadness, his golden youth coming to a sodden end, was a gift. (Look at what he later did in his Oscar-winning performance as oddball did-he-or-didn't-he-poison-his-wife Claus von Bülow.)
Our card was on the table, put down with little warning. Jeremy mentally considered his hand and knew it to be a good one. Was there to be any other enticement?
"I think I'd like to stick with Sebastian," he said.
"Ah-ha," I said. "There is something we haven't told you yet."
"Which is what?"
"The voice-over. Charles's voice-over," said Derek. "We're putting it all back. So we'll see it all through his eyes. Your eyes."
"That's an interesting idea," Jeremy said. "Do you think it'll work? All those words, all that 'thinking'?"
"If you're saying it, why wouldn't it?" I asked.
And the lesson we learn from this, children: if you want to sell an actor on giving up a part he knows to be good, better offer him the chance to do a voice over over twenty hours of screen time.
However, as I said the heart of the memoir are Michael's relationships with his mother and the three men who were in different ways his fathers. So, one more fantasy and probably bio dad Orson quote, and then a lengthy Geraldine excerpt.
Michael, summing up Orson after hearing about his death: His great bold multicoloured glorious banner had become more tattered, battered, and threadbare as the years went by; but still he'd stood there, his first on the staff, stout of girth, full of dreams, wise but not jaded, the inheritor of his past, and the tempestous child of his unique imagination; and now 'dead at seventy'. How could I explain my feelings about this man I'd met?
And here's the both touching and funny description of mother-son interaction in Geraldine's old age:
In the mid-time of my mother's dementia, before she was all gone, I felt like she was the dealer in a card game, in which she should only have been a player, grateful for whatever cards came her way. But no, she dealt a game with no rules. I wouldn't know if we were playing poker, canasta, or snap, and the cards would change value at a whim, and the takes raised or decreased in the same manner.
In her life, she had tried never to lose, nor did she want to know, and she didn't ever want to leave the table.
Her mind was going, but not her nature. She had an inclination to amuse and, maybe, depending on the circumstances, to deceive. And sometimes, I think her ferocious emptying mind was communing with the anarchic spirit of her Irish compatriot, the bleakly hilarious Sam Beckett. (...)
I asked her the question I'd never asked directly before.
"Who's my father? Orson or Eddy?"
"Why, Orson Welles of course. You even look like him."
So, the Ace was down. Finally, I thought. I was aware I breathed a great exhalation of relief. There it was. After years of struggling in the cloud, I felt I was standing on the peak with the air clear around me. In some way it was probably too late but at last I was there.
My mother was silent for a moment. then she said, "Edward Lindsay-Hogg is the father of Michael Lindsay-Hogg."
What? Who'd shuffled this deck?
"And not Orson Welles?"
"No. Although he or she could have been."
Then another silence, as my mother moved the cards around again. She looked at me and asked, "And who are you? Are you my cousin?"
"No. I'm your son, Michael.'"
"And who's your father?" she asked.
"That's what we were just talking about."
"There's one thing I do know," she said.
"What?" I asked, wondering which card she'd play, the Ace again or another Joker.
"Who my father is," my mother said.
"And who is that?" I asked, curious to find out who she'd claim.
"You. You are my father."
In a way, I think it helps that our author never quite made it to star status himself; it makes him an excellent observer of everyone else, inside and outside the various circles at the same time. He was the son of actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, and the various candidates for the position of his father - her first husband who gave Michael his name, Orson Welles whom his mother had an affair with and who for a long time is Michael's fantasy father, and her second husband who did the actual raising but never quite connected - make for a surplus of father figures regarded with varying emotional investment, and that's not touching on Geraldine's lovers without possible fatherhood like Robert Capa or Henry Miller, and her bitter struggle to make it in Hollywood and/or the New York and Dublin stage. Geraldine is the breadwinner in the family and the men have nicknames like "Boy", which makes for a different gender coding from the start. If anyone is the main character of this volume, approached from different angles in a Citizen Kane like fashion, she is, mercurial, determined, changing and recreating her stories all the time.
In the 60s, Michael became a director on the British tv show Ready Steady Go which led to a lot of promos (= future music vids) for the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, culminating in that most depressing of rock documentaries, Let It Be. But before we reach the infamous breakup in 1969, our hero has, in 1966, such problems as to whether dine with Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich or to meet the Beatles for lunch so he'll get hired to shoot the promo for Paperback Writer. May I volunteer for that kind of problem? (Not really. I like my family situation better. Also, Orson & Marlene on the one hand versus John, Paul, George and Ringo on the other are a cruel, cruel choice.) Whereas I'm really glad not to have one of his later dilemmas, when he prepared, cast, and shot a great deal of the tv version of Brideshead Revisited only to be foiled by an unholy combination of the big union strike and his mother getting dementia, with the result of being replaced as a director of that future tv classic.
Now for the quotable goodies to show you what I mean re: MLHs writing style.
Starting with a reflection on the inevitable fictionalisation of memory:
One of the things I find in writing about people who are dead is that, after a short or long time, no matter how close the relationship was, they become like characters in fiction; in that, since they are no longer able to explain motives or clarify obfuscations or tell the truth, however simple or complicated, the author must do it for them and use imagination to decipher the information and decode the memories. But with this comes a daunting responsibility - to not come to easy and tidy conclusions about someone's life and to not avoid new evidence which runs counter to what seemed clear earlier. And to remember that people can change; what someone was at twenty-five or thirty might bear no resemblance to the person at fifty or sixty, they having weathered fate and circumstance, exalted by the good, buffeted by the bad; and the part that luck plays, how it can be cruel or grand, or just have gone somewhere else.
Wise words, and would that every memoirist was aware of this. Child!Michael meets Orson Welles, who is directing Geraldine in King Lear, for the first time:
He was glorious at that time, forty years old, tall, broad, dressed in black, starting to be heavy but not nearly with the weight which must have partly killed him. A big head with glossy black hair, alert amused brown eyes under the broad forehead, with his enveloping, welcoming seductive voice. But there was something else to him, a kind of emanation of energy and intelligence, curiosity, and originality.
(Orson spends this memoir being Orsonish, i.e. sometimes charming and sometimes infuriating. Never quite reliable. More Welles quotes to come.)
And here we have our author characterising the Mick Jagger/Keith Richards relationship, of which he saw quite a lot through two decades:
(I) realized it was really a struggle between Keith and Mick, and saw the complexity that existed in a relationship that had started in grade school. On this occasion, it was through a rabid dog had gone on the attack against a wily agile cat who, I was sure, would always find a safe perch to land on.
From now on I shall always think of Mick Jagger as a cat. It totally fits. Back in time, to young Michael meeting William Randolph Hearst via Marion Davies:
It wasn't that I was uneasy as I lifted my heavy silver spoon, but a room this large was unfamiliar to me, that and it being so cool inside and the sun so hot outside and large Mr. Hearst at the head of the table, and the darkness behind him except for the shaded window made me feel that everything was strangely muted and, somehow, grey.
Hearst becomes less grey when mentioning he owns young Michael's favourite comic book character, though. And Marion saves his action figure from the pool, so. From real Hearst to fictional Kane popping up, of all the times, when Michael does meet the Beatles:
George asked, "Have you ever seen Citizen Kane?"
"I have, yes."
"Rosebud," he said, as if exchanging a password.
"Rosebud, yes."
"Brian said to look at it. I saw it last night. We should do a video like that."
"That would be great," I said, eager for an ally, although not exactly sure how a "Rosebud" video would go.
Me neither, Michael, me neither. The whole first encounter description is a black comedy with Hard Day's Night overtones, though he's unironic and sincere when trying to define what made the Beatles THE band, Rolling Stones notwithstanding, what their specific appeal was:
As the Gods of Mythology had their particular domain, so The Beatles were the Gods of Joy. Joy in music, joy in singing, in laughter and jokes, joy in fame, in having such a great connection with each other and with us, joy in being alive.
So it would have been unimaginable then, and is ghastly now, to consider that of those who came from Liverpool, principally Brian Epstein, Peter Brown, Mal Evans, Neil Aspinall, John, Paul, George, and Ringo, that by the end of 1980 three would be dead and another would not reach the age of sixty.
By the end of '68, of course, the gods of joy were severely lacking in joy, and their connections to each other were breaking down. Cue ominous music in the background (more Bernard Hermann than Beatles) as Paul has a brainwave and calls Michael to a meeting with the rest of the gang, suggesting a documentary film on them making their next album, complete with concluding concert.
Paul was the one who kept pushing for us to make a plan. His character is resolute, and I think in his heart Paul felt that if he couldn't get them to agree as a group to do something as a group that they might fall apart, and, because of his nature, that was the last thing he wanted.
The meeting ends with a scene no RPFler would dare to make up. And who needs to if you've got John Lennon doing all your work for you?
As the meeting was drawing to a weary close, John, not this day with Yoko, said he wanted to play us a tape he and Yoko had made. He got up and put a cassette into the tape machine and stood beside it, looking at us as we listened. The soft murmuring voices did not at first signal their purpose. It was a man and a woman but hard to hear, the microphone having been at a distance. I wondered if the lack of clarity was the point. Were we even meant to understand what was going on, was it a kind of artwork where we would not be able to put the voices into a context, and was context important? I felt perhaps this was something John and Yoko were examining. But then, after a few minutes, the context became clear. John and Yoko were making love, with endearments, giggles, heavy breathing, both real and satirical, and the occasional more direct sounds of pleasure reaching for a climax, all recorded by the faraway microphone. But there was something innocent about it, too, as they were engaged in a sweet serious game.
John clicked the off button and turned again to look toward the table, his eyebrows quizzical above his round glasses, seemingly genuinely curious about what reaction his little tape would elicit. However often they'd shared small rooms in Hamburg, whatever they knew of each other's love and sex lives, this tape seemed to have stopped the other three cold. Perhaps it touched a nerve of residual Northern reticence.
After a palpable silence, Paul said, 'Well, that's an interesting one."
The others muttered something and the meeting was over.
It occurred to me as I was walking down the stairs that what we'd heard could have been an expression of 1960s freedom and openness but was it more likely that it was as if a gauntlet had been thrown down? "You need to understand that this is where she and I are now. I don't want to hold your hand anymore."
I, err, have my doubts whether it was all about expressing 1960s freedom and openness as well. Anyway, Michael's description of the Let it Be disaster basically is according to your avarage biography though he downplays his own taped hostility to Yoko; among the 80 or so hours of material from those sessions, there is one occasion where he suggests dosing her with a sleeping draught so someone could have a conversation with John without her and at one point even makes a racist joke, calling her "the yellow peril", wheras in his memoirs he gets along perfectly well with her, admires "the refinement of her beauty, her intelligence and questing artistic imagination, and her commitment to the union she and John were creating, and the magnetic field she'd erected around them, and later defends her against the accusation of having caused the break-up when Orson, no less eager than the rest of the world to get the inside scoop, wants to know what tore the Beatles apart. He has a trump card to finish his Beatles-related chapter with, of course, to wit, the rooftop concert.
On Thursday, January 30, 1969, The Beatles, Yoko, and I gathered about noon in a small room off the wooden staircase leading to the roof and, to my dismay, I realized the enterprise was not secure. George didn't want to do it, didn't see the point - what did it have to do with anything?
Ringo said, "And it's cold up there."
"Come on, lads," Paul said. "It'll be fun," enthusiasm covering the hard muscle of his determination. "Let's do something."
But no one moved. The six of us stood there, stasis about to set in, momentum about to be fatally lost, ennui about to settle its cloud on our beings. But one voice had not been heard from. Eyes under lids looked toward that person. Time froze.
"Fuck it," John said. "Let's do it."
And so The Beatles climbed the narrow staircase to the roof and into history. The concert on the roof was the last time The Beatles ever played together to any kind of audience. It was their final performance, their good-bye, although none of us knew it. And the wonderful thing was that they were happy, dispute and rancor forgotten. In the forty minutes we were up there, on that cold winter's day, they rocked and rolled and connected as they had in years gone by, friends again. It was beautiful to see.
When it was over, John stepped to the mike and said: "I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition."
The other great triumph/disaster in Michael Lindsay-Hogg's repertoire of stories is his involvement with Brideshead Revisited. Here, my favourite story deals with how he and the producer had to sell Jeremy Irons, who was originally cast as Sebastian, on the fact they wanted him to play Charles instead. This was especially difficult because Jeremy Irons, no fool, knew Sebastian was the better role. (If you're unfamiliar with Brideshead Revisited, Sebastian is excentric, flamboyant, witty, gay and doomed. Charles is the narrator and, err, a bit dull.)
"Well, how are things going, the casting?" Jeremy asked, eager to catch up.
"The casting. That's a good question," I said, having been offered the opening. "Look, um, Derek and I have been thinking."
"That's always a good thing," said Jeremy, teasing.
"Charles," Derek said, jumping right in.
"Charles? How do you mean?"
"For you."
"Oh."
Jeremy was silent for a moment and then said, "I'm very happy with Sebastian. I've been thinking about him a lot."
I wondered if he'd bought the new coat to waer as a part of his costume.
Jeremy took a sip of tea.
Jeremy was, and is, a smart actor and realized that Sebastian, with his glamour and his sadness, his golden youth coming to a sodden end, was a gift. (Look at what he later did in his Oscar-winning performance as oddball did-he-or-didn't-he-poison-his-wife Claus von Bülow.)
Our card was on the table, put down with little warning. Jeremy mentally considered his hand and knew it to be a good one. Was there to be any other enticement?
"I think I'd like to stick with Sebastian," he said.
"Ah-ha," I said. "There is something we haven't told you yet."
"Which is what?"
"The voice-over. Charles's voice-over," said Derek. "We're putting it all back. So we'll see it all through his eyes. Your eyes."
"That's an interesting idea," Jeremy said. "Do you think it'll work? All those words, all that 'thinking'?"
"If you're saying it, why wouldn't it?" I asked.
And the lesson we learn from this, children: if you want to sell an actor on giving up a part he knows to be good, better offer him the chance to do a voice over over twenty hours of screen time.
However, as I said the heart of the memoir are Michael's relationships with his mother and the three men who were in different ways his fathers. So, one more fantasy and probably bio dad Orson quote, and then a lengthy Geraldine excerpt.
Michael, summing up Orson after hearing about his death: His great bold multicoloured glorious banner had become more tattered, battered, and threadbare as the years went by; but still he'd stood there, his first on the staff, stout of girth, full of dreams, wise but not jaded, the inheritor of his past, and the tempestous child of his unique imagination; and now 'dead at seventy'. How could I explain my feelings about this man I'd met?
And here's the both touching and funny description of mother-son interaction in Geraldine's old age:
In the mid-time of my mother's dementia, before she was all gone, I felt like she was the dealer in a card game, in which she should only have been a player, grateful for whatever cards came her way. But no, she dealt a game with no rules. I wouldn't know if we were playing poker, canasta, or snap, and the cards would change value at a whim, and the takes raised or decreased in the same manner.
In her life, she had tried never to lose, nor did she want to know, and she didn't ever want to leave the table.
Her mind was going, but not her nature. She had an inclination to amuse and, maybe, depending on the circumstances, to deceive. And sometimes, I think her ferocious emptying mind was communing with the anarchic spirit of her Irish compatriot, the bleakly hilarious Sam Beckett. (...)
I asked her the question I'd never asked directly before.
"Who's my father? Orson or Eddy?"
"Why, Orson Welles of course. You even look like him."
So, the Ace was down. Finally, I thought. I was aware I breathed a great exhalation of relief. There it was. After years of struggling in the cloud, I felt I was standing on the peak with the air clear around me. In some way it was probably too late but at last I was there.
My mother was silent for a moment. then she said, "Edward Lindsay-Hogg is the father of Michael Lindsay-Hogg."
What? Who'd shuffled this deck?
"And not Orson Welles?"
"No. Although he or she could have been."
Then another silence, as my mother moved the cards around again. She looked at me and asked, "And who are you? Are you my cousin?"
"No. I'm your son, Michael.'"
"And who's your father?" she asked.
"That's what we were just talking about."
"There's one thing I do know," she said.
"What?" I asked, wondering which card she'd play, the Ace again or another Joker.
"Who my father is," my mother said.
"And who is that?" I asked, curious to find out who she'd claim.
"You. You are my father."
